XSEED Games

Over the course of the SENRAN KAGURA series so far, we’ve seen the characters grow in meaningful ways. They’ve become more self-confident, gained greater respect for both friends and foes, and made progress in working through their troubles. So what’s it like going back to the beginning of all that?

To answer that, first we need to go back to the development of the original Burst. We’ve talked about this a few times before, but the original game was written as a standalone story, without any sequels in mind. In terms of back story and basic worldbuilding, Burst is perhaps the most in-depth out of any game in the series. But in terms of the characters’ arcs, it’s a bit out of sync with the later games; at one point, for example, Yagyū tells Hibari that she’s perfectly capable and just needs more confidence, while other games, particularly in the early series, have Yagyū doubting Hibari’s capabilities until circumstances force Hibari to prove herself…

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The SENRAN KAGURA series’ fan service has always been plain to see. Usually, when we talk about the series here on this blog, we like to highlight what else it has to offer: the storytelling, the character development, the way the characters’ relationships grow and change from game to game.

So, to get it out of the way right off the bat, Reflexions is not about those things at all. It’s unapologetic fan service through and through, and we wanted to write this to give everyone an idea of what to expect from it.

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So, are you all enjoying Ys: Memories of Celceta on PC? YOU DID BUY IT, DIDN’T YOU? DIIIIDN’T YOU?! …Ahem. Yes, I’m sure you did. So, moving on…

The game was ported from Vita on our behalf by Hyde – the same wonderful people who ported Ys SEVEN for us last year. And of course, neither we nor they are the kinds of people to just take a Vita game, slap it on PC, and call it a day; we wanted to make the experience feel like a natural fit on PC, with all the bells and whistles modern PC gamers have come to expect from the very best titles. Additionally, we wanted to ensure it was worth your while to play this version of the game whether or not you’ve played the original version before. The idea of a “quick and dirty” port really isn’t in our lexicon!

This brings us to the topic of today’s discussion: what’s new in Ys Celceta? Why should you buy this game (WHICH OF COURSE YOU WON’T NEED TO DO SINCE YOU ALREADY HAVE, RIIIIIIGHT?), and what can you expect when you fire it up for the first time? …

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What’s going on? Jason here and it’s my first time writing up a blog post so go easy on me.  I’m here today to talk about our latest title release: Bullet Witch on Windows PC. Now, I’m sure some of you haven’t even heard of this game. Bullet Witch was originally released on the Xbox 360 back in 2006.

But why now? Why bring Bullet Witch to PC?  Well, we thought this had potential to be a fun action game with some tweaks and adjustments for modern gamers.  I was a PS3 man, so I never had the chance to own an Xbox 360, which meant I never got to play this game. I first tried the original Bullet Witch game around August 2017, and boy, was it rough. The screen was dark, the game wasn’t very responsive, the AI was too buff and dumb, and the framerate was awful.  We thought if these things could be fixed, the game would be much improved.

So, when the developers came to us for improvements, we had a few things on our list to bring this title in line with our other PC releases:

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It has now been a bit more than half a year since Trails of Cold Steel was launched on PC. That was the first game for which I contributed the majority of the porting effort, and it made me believe that I could also take on a complete end-to-end porting project for its sequel. That sequel - Trails of Cold Steel II - was released yesterday, and in this blog post I’ll talk a bit about all the features it implements beyond what was seen in the previous releases.

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Greetings, future Zweiholics! Are you ready to learn a bit more about Zwei: The Arges Adventure, our upcoming action RPG slated for release on Steam, GOG, and The Humble Store by Humble Bundle on Wednesday, January 24^th? Well… you’re in luck, because I’m ready to knowledge-bomb you like nobody’s business! 

Last time, we talked about some of the more fascinating elements that were encountered during localization which are no longer present in the game, so this time, what say we talk about some of the more interesting elements that are totally still there (in one form or another, anyway), just waiting to be discovered?

For starters, let’s discuss the masked “master” character, who serves the same function in Zwei: The Arges Adventure that Gallandeau served in Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection: he teaches you new “arcana” (read: combo moves) at the end of very specific dungeon paths. Except… all of those dungeon paths are 100% optional, so you could theoretically go through the entire game without ever even meeting him. Until the point in the plot when you’re forced to meet him, anyway! And once you reach that point, he reveals his true identity, meaning he’s no longer a mysterious masked master.

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It’s time for our last Q&A blog of the year. It’s been a fun time answering all these questions–you guys had some seriously good ones!–but now it is time for us to chill out and celebrate 2018. Hopefully we can give you guys good reasons to celebrate 2018, too!

For our final Q&A blog, we have answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader
John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager
Ryan Graff, Localization Lead
Liz Rita, QA Tester
Nick Colucci, Localization Editor
Brittany Avery, Localization Producer
Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

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It’s that time again! Our fourth 2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza is here! I lied about there being more next week in the last blog, because it is clearly still this week. This time, we have some answers from:

John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager
Ryan Graff, Localization Lead
Nick Colucci, Localization Editor
Brittany Avery, Localization Producer
Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

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Happy Holidays! It’s Christmas for those who are down for Santa, and we have a gift for you! (It’s also a gift for those who aren’t down with Santa. You know what I mean.) Our third 2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza is here! There will be more next week, but for now, we have some answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President & Team Leader
John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager
Ryan Graff, Localization Lead
Liz Rita, QA Tester
Brittany Avery, Localization Producer
Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

One of our icons for Trails of Cold Steel II PC, coming in 2018

Now, on to the questions!

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Our second 2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza is here! There will be more next week, but for now, we have some answers from:

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader
John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager
Nick Colucci, Localization Editor
Brittany Avery, Localization Producer
Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

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It’s time for our first 2017 End-of-the-Year Q&A Extravaganza! We’ve got a bunch of these we’ll be posting over the holiday break, so please look forward to them. Now, let’s roll right in!

We have answers from: 

Ken Berry, Executive Vice President / Team Leader
John Wheeler, Assistant Localization Manager
Nick Colucci, Localization Editor
Liz Rita, QA Tester
Brittany Avery, Localization Producer
Thomas Lipschultz, Localization Producer

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Tom here again, for more fanboy gushing over Zwei: The Arges Adventure!

I’ve already touched on the game’s amazing script, and I’ll definitely go more into that in my next blog entry (there’s a lot to talk about there, as this is easily the strangest script I’ve ever worked with, on multiple levels!), but I figured I’d take this opportunity now to instead discuss some of the new and updated features that our amazing programmer was able to cram into this release. I’d rank most of these under the “quality-of-life improvements” category, though some are more along the lines of old but notable features from the original 2001 PC version which have been adapted to run more readily on modern systems and integrated more thoroughly into the game proper.

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AAAAAAHHHHH IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING.

I’ve been working on this game for the better part of a year now, but have been unable to say anything about it for PR reasons – namely, that it wasn’t in a showable state, and we didn’t want to confuse prospective players by having two Zwei games announced but unreleased at the same time. Which is totally reasonable, but AAAAAAAHHHH I’VE BEEN WANTING TO TALK ABOUT THIS GAME SO BADLY YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

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Howdy, everybody!

Welcome to what I think will be the final localization blog for STORY OF SEASONS: Trio of Towns. As you might have seen, we announced a release date (Nov. 9) and price ($7.99) for the Trio of Towns DLC. We are also, at long last, able to release the Trio of Towns 3DS theme on the North American eShop for $1.99. I apologize for the drought of information between our last blog post and now. Production proved to be challenging in unforeseen ways, and we didn’t want to give out new info before we were certain the content was ready to be released.

A scene from one of the DLC events.

I’d like to use this blog to lay out all the content that will be released next Thursday.

Patch

The Version 1.1 patch will either be automatically downloaded to your 3DS system, or you can find it on the eShop and download it from there.

In addition to the bug fixes and text corrections mentioned in our previous blog, this patch will add four outfits. These include Lest and Frey’s outfits from our 2013 release Rune Factory 4. We wanted to distribute these outfits to all players as thanks for their support of Trio of Towns, and their patience during the development of the game’s extra content. Once the update is installed, the new clothing items will be available for purchase at Ludus’ shop (the Rune Factory 4 outfits) and the wholesale store in Tsuyukusa (the Perfect Dress and Poodle outfits).

I’m including screenshots of the ingredients needed to make each, so those of you who want to cosplay Lest/Frey (or voice actress Ayana Taketatsu, who inspired the Perfect outfits) can start getting the materials together.

Princess’ Attire

Prince’s Attire

Perfect Top Hat

Perfect Dress

Poodle Hat

Poodle Costume

DLC

Once you’ve downloaded the 1.1 patch, the DLC, called the “New Neighbors Pack,” will be purchasable from a newly added “Downloadable Content” menu on the title screen.

Follow us for more thrilling screenshots of menus!

We decided to roll all of the content into one DLC package, which allowed us to reduce its cost from our original estimate to $7.99. This “New Neighbors Pack” is the only DLC for the game, and will contain almost* everything from the four post-launch Japanese patches:

• Marriage candidates Woofio and Stephanie
  
• The ability to have a child with Inari
  
• Events such as cultural exchanges among the three towns and a visit from your father
  
• Events immediately following the New Year’s Festival and Starlight Gala
  
• About 50 new lines of dialogue per marriage candidate, including clothing/pet reactions
  
• 5 special winter outfits
  
• A performer story

We’ve posted lots of screenshots from this content on the STORY OF SEASONS Facebook page over the past few months. For more information on Woofio and Stephanie, be sure to check back there next week.

If you were wondering, players with the retail game, the patch, and the DLC can all play online with one another without issue. The new outfits will just show up as the default outfit if you are playing on a version without the added data.

*As with Hamtaro, we were unable to secure the rights to use Chebrashka, so this little Russian character is missing from our release.

Theme

This theme features the bachelors and bachelorettes (sadly, it is missing Woofio and Stephanie), and plays one of the romance event songs. You can purchase it (and the STORY OF SEASONS and Rune Factory 4) themes from the Theme Shop on your Nintendo 3DS.

It has been a long road to releasing this extra content, from our first blog post asking for feedback to release about 9 months later. The process of translating and editing was smooth, but we hit several roadblocks during production. Still, I think that Trio of Towns is a really special entry in this long-running series (though I’m obviously a little biased), and so even though we’ve made you wait, I hope that you will enjoy this opportunity to interact with Westown, Tsuyukusa, and Lulukoko in new ways.

Can you hear it? A voice, booming and boisterous, blowing in upon the cool winds of autumn. A voice that beckons you to come sit a spell and play a good ol’ videogame. “They don’t make ‘em like this no more,” it says. “Well…most don’t. That’s why we need to sell a bunch’a copies, so they’ll get right to making Zwei 3! Yes siree, with Falcom’s storied lineage of action RPGs, it’d be a slam dunk! Ghahahaha!” That voice…is my voice, broad as the sea and hearty as a meal that consists solely of potatoes and slabs of meat.

That’s right, true believers, it’s Nick, here once again to share with you the myriad fascinations of working in videogame localization. If you’ve been keeping up, this is the fourth blog I’ve written about the upcoming release of Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection. The first entry gave a basic rundown of what the game is like and what you can expect from it, while the second entry went into more depth about the localization work and the nuances of character writing. The third entry was a progress report, detailing where we were in the QA cycle and why we’d be missing our summer release date.

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